Where, and don't say Sakurai, I compared them today and would be much happier using Messiah as a text.

Shiff is a classic, Liboff leaves something to be desired. If Griffiths is written in the same style as his Electrodynamics text, I'd never even look at it.

Advanced Quantum texts are a different lot, Bethe wrote one back in the late 60's about the same time he won the Nobel. I likeit. Landau , not Landau and Lif****z, wrote on in the late 90's which is good. Sakurai's advanced book is up there, but so is Mandel, or Aitcheson and Hey or Bjorken and Drell.

Back to the more intro type texts, Cohen-Tannoudji is halfway decent, but I cannot understand why he lays it out as he does. Slater wrote a text, he used it for graduate level until he finally retired, the first half was used for anyone, the last half for atomic and solid state theorists. I like it very much.

Sakurais' strength lies in his introducing symmetry early, it is good for the budding high energy theory types, but can be lost on the more practically oriented solid state or condensed matter theorists.

That is the equivalent price of the Dover edition recently published. I'd purchase it, as a matter a fact since this thread has started I started reading it again and am finding morre and more to like about it.

Quantum texts are so varied, as are courses in quantum physics, that the most appropriate book depends on what you want to get out of it. If you are enrolled in a particular course, then get the textbook the lecturer recommends--you probably don't have much choice. If you are a student who is trying to learn ahead of time, get the book that is assigned to the courses that you will probably be studying.

Otherwise, it is indeed a tough choice. The thing about quantum physics is that it has so many aspects to it. Do you want the logico-mathematical foundations? Do you want to be able to do basic calculations of quantum systems? Do you want to be well set up for quantum field theory? Do you want quantum from a group-theoretic perspective for use in particle physics? Do you want to know about interpretations?

I would recommend a different book for each of these and choosing the wrong one could be effectively useless for other purposes. If you become a physicist and have to care about the various aspects, you'll probably read many different quantum texts in time and get different things from each.

So although this doesn't say much about Messiah, it might be useful for some people to hear. If Messiah has been assigned as the book for your course, get it and learn to love it :)